A collection of articles covering a wide range of topics written by members of the Astronomy Section over the years.
The first transit of Venus across the disc of the Sun since 1882 was witnessed by a group of Astronomy Section members at the Astronomical Observatory. Preparations started at 04.30 Universal Time (UT), setting up the 6-inch coelostat about one metre from its normal position, in order to catch the early morning Sun, which had risen at 04.05 UT.
122 years ago the knowledge we had of the solar system was very different from that of today. The five ‘wanderers’ in the sky - the five naked eye planets - were augmented by the discovery of Uranus in 1781 and Neptune in 1846.
A transit of Venus is like a solar eclipse but instead of the Moon being in line between the Earth and Sun it is the planet Venus that is directly in line. You can hardly fail to notice a solar eclipse because the Moon, being about the same apparent size as the Sun, blocks it out. Venus, on the othe...